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US Senate Set To Vote On Whether Climate Change Is a Hoax
sciencehabit writes The U.S. Senate's simmering debate over climate science has come to a full boil today, as lawmakers prepare to vote on measures offered by Democrats that affirm that climate change is real—with one also noting that global warming is not "a hoax." In an effort to highlight their differences with some Republicans on climate policy, several Democrats have filed largely symbolic amendments to a bill that would approve the Keystone XL pipeline. They are designed to put senators on the record on whether climate change is real and human-caused.
NASA seems to think that climate change is being caused by human activities and they back it up with a lot of references to studies on the matter. IMHO, we're never going to convince people to change their behaviors or give up their luxuries. If we want to make a difference we need to develop the technologies that make it more advantageous to adopt the renewable solution (like kick-ass cars and cheaper home energy).
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
The scientific method is for experiments. If you wanted to use it to see if global warming was real, you would make a forecast like "The world will get hotter than it's ever been.", and see if it comes true or not. It did come true. Last year was hotter than it has ever been, globally. Scientists were telling us that would happen for years.
It's time to stop denying. It's time to stop saying "they should use the scientific method" when you know full well they have. You know, that is, unless your head is in the ground or your preferred news network is putting it there.
Bruce Perens.
Malaria is not a warm weather dependent disease. England in the 16th Century had malarial marshes (in the middle of the Little Ice Age) and the largest malarial outbreak of the 20th Century occurred in Arctic circle Russia.
The real vector of malaria is poor sanitation, which in turn is a function of poverty and lack of economic development.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Every country does deeply stupid things.
Look at the EU and their policy on GMO. It is ENTIRELY fear based. They just label something as GMO which is completely useless and people are taught that GMO is bad period. Even research into GMO has almost entirely ended in Europe. It doesn't matter that their own studies show the ones they have tested are safe they continue to be against it not just in the EU but world wide. The EU is a pretty major factor in stopping the usage of golden rice.
This kind of thing can go both ways.
I am currently in Germany working on a Masters degree and PhD but some of my professors have already told me that to do my work once I am done I will have to go back to the USA since DNA editing on humans is pretty much defacto illegal in the EU and they don't allow the research into it either. However in the USA we have companies using technology like CRISPR/CAS9 to silence genes that causes diseases like Huntington's disease. Imagine a one time injection and you are completely cured of a horrible genetic disease? Imagine being able to replace faulty tumor suppressor genes and virtually wipe out cancer.
However none of that matters. People in different areas of the world have a world viewpoint and then they pick and choose the science that supports it and try to claim superiority over others based on that. With liberals in the USA we have the anti-vaccine movement and that is something that conservatives are almost universal in support of and the anti-vaccine movement is massively anti science and should be stopped before they cause the deaths of tens of millions of people. We have the conservatives not accepting human damage to the environment. We have Europeans against genetic engineering. We have countries where their religious beliefs means that women are second class citizens.
The human race is a bunch of barely evolved thugs and barbarians and they like to claim they are civilized by choosing bits and pieces of science to support their worldview and make fun of anyone else that does not accept that science also while ignoring the stuff they refuse to accept.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
That understanding was based on a scare program. The truth is quite the opposite.
I spent many years working with vector borne disease control, so I actually know something about this. Let me suggest a slightly different way of thinking about DDT.
The problem isn't DDT per se, but how, where and when it is applied.
In WW2 draftees were dusted with DDT powder to kill body lice, and so far as we know no adverse health results resulted -- probably because there were none. That's because this *application* is benign. Likewise spraying house interiors with DDT is a cost effective, safe, and environmentally benign.
Indiscriminate fogging with DDT on the other hand is neither environmentally benign, nor in the long term effective. DDT is (potentially) great stuff, and therein lies the problem. It promises (to a certain kind of mentality) to take the brain-work out of deciding when and where to spray. It's tempting to roll the trucks with ULV sprayers and spray anywhere and anytime, and it will often produce dramatic effects in the short term for not much money. In the long term it produces a host of environmental problems, and pesticide resistance -- particularly if it enters aquatic habitat. For one thing, it is toxic to invertebrates. **That's why we use the stuff**. The problem is that it is non-specific, and it (and its toxic by-products) remain in the environment for years or decades. Modern alternatives break down rapidly into non-toxic byproducts. In fact DDT's persistence is what makes it highly desirable for in-house spraying. One spraying can last for a year or more. That's good when you want to kill everything, for a long time; but that's not what you want to do when you're applying outside. Many invertebrates are beneficial, or even indispensable.
It's notable that in the article you link only quotes papers from the '69 to '72 era when it comes to the ecological impacts of DDT. This smacks of cherry-picking. When an idea like eggshell thinning enters the scientific discourse, it is normal for evidence for and against the idea to be found in the literature. This means it is *always* possible to find early literature citations which appear to refute the current scientific consensus. A quick google scholar search for articles on eggshell thinning and DDT from 1975 on shows overwhelming evidence in support of the hypothesis. For example it reveals the reason that the early feeding studies cited failed to find eggshell thinning: in many species it is not DDT, but DDE (a by product of the environmental breakdown of DDT) that is the culprit.
That DDT per se is not particularly toxic to humans is no news to anyone. I was actually briefly part of a team that looked at ways of tracking DDT usage so that it could be used in house spraying in Africa. The problem is that in desperately poor countries stuff gets stolen, and the danger is that material intended for safe and environmentally benign domestic spraying would be diverted to agricultural use which while not particularly threatening to human health would have disastrous impact on environmental health and the economic activities that depend on that.
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